My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling, which first flowered in't Zand, Netherlands in 1986. The breeding efforts had as their objective the production of truly short Asiatic hybrid lilies with upfacing, vibrant yellow and gold flowers, suited to forcing into flower out of season for use as pot plants, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
I achieved the desired objective by intercrossing Lilium `Charisma` (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 4,180) with Lilium `Sunray.` `Sunray,` one of the early Stone and Payne hybrids from Connecticut, has been grown in the Netherlands and in the United States as a commercial cut-flower and pot-plant; it is too tall for an ideal pot-plant, however, and its more outfacing yellow flowers are not large. The flowers of my new lily are characterized by brilliant gold color with a deeper golden-orange margin, light spotting in the center only, and large size. The clone possesses unusually short, strong, stout stems. In addition, it possesses to a high degree desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor. The clone is a good grower and propagator, as observed at't Zand, Netherlands.
My new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at't Zand, Netherlands. Successive generations produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of my new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.